"Amalek dwells in the Negev land

And the Hittite and Jebusite and the Amorite dwell in the high country,

And the Canaanite dwells by the sea and by the Jordan."

And Caleb silenced the people around Moses and said,

"We will surely go up and take hold of it, for we will surely prevail over it."

 

We will surely go up and take hold of it. When Moshe sent off the twelve tribal leaders to scout the land of Canaan, he provided them with a method for ascertaining the inhabitants' morale:

The land's fortresses were erected to provide sanctuary for the weak; the strong ("giants") disdained living within the fortresses, preferring the open countryside. Presence of the giants within the walled cities would be an indication of 'melting hearts'.

The scouts reported seeing the giants within the fortifications. Thus Caleb was correct in his appraisal "We can go up and take hold".

The other scouts, however, attributed the giants' presence within the walls not to the latter's fears, but to a current plague ("a land which devours its inhabitants") which drove all - including the giants - to seek relief within the city walls (sic!). Proof that such was the case was that "they saw us as grasshoppers, looking down upon us and toying with us."

(Paraphrased from Chatam Sofer, Bemidbar 13:30)

 

 

The gravity of words

Evelyne Sitruk¹

In the Torah portion Shelach Lecha, the Israelites stand on the threshold of the Promised Land that they must conquer. According to several Biblical commentators, they already know that Moses will not enter the land of Israel with them, that the miracles they had known in the desert will cease, and indeed that they will have to face their responsibilities on their own. In their apparent fear that God will cast them off when they try to conquer the land, the generation of the desert reminds us of an anxious child taking its first steps. Starting with the exodus from Egypt and until now, God has done everything for them: He split the Red Sea, showered manna upon them, fought their enemies, showed them the way with a pillar of fire, and so on. Now, at the entrance to Canaan, the Torah is their only guide. It will have to suffice. The Lord will not intervene and Moses will not enter the Promised Land. Why would they not be paralyzed with fear at the enormity of the task?

The mission of the spies was, therefore, legitimate. Not only did Moses choose it; it even had God's authorization. What, then, went wrong and made its end so tragic that we see God ready to forego His project, to destroy the entire nation and to start all over again? ["I will strike them with pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they!" (Num. 14:12); Rashi comments, "And if you ask about My promise to the forefathers, the reply is that 'I will make of you a nation' - and you, too, are their descendent."]

To understand the gravity of the spies' offense, let us return to the creation of man (Gen. 1:27): "God created man in His image, in God's image He created him;" God created an ideal being, an angel seemingly equipped with every perfection: God's image. Subsequently, in Chap. 2 verse 7, the Lord's project appears rather less noble: "the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth…and man became a living being." Here we no longer have a divine masterwork, creatio ex nihilo as decreed by God ("created"), but something "formed" - the Lord formed, namely constructed from ordinary matter ("dust of the earth"), an animated being, i.e. an animal. The Lord constructed a terrestrial. Nothing more is left of the initial sublime project of "man in His image". What, then, distinguishes man from the other animals?

Onkeles offers us the following interpretation: he translates "living being" by ru'ach memalela - a speaking spirit. What distinguishes man from dumb animals is the word. And the spies' offense lay precisely in their words.

Moses clearly defined and explained the spies' mission (Num. 13:17-20):

When Moses sent them to scout the land of Canaan, he said to them, "Go up there into the Negeb and on into the hill country, and see what kind of country it is. Are the people who dwell in it strong or weak, few or many? Is the country in which they dwell good or bad? Are the towns they live in open or fortified? Is the soil rich or poor? Is the land wooded or not? And take pains to bring back some of the fruit of the land." Now it happened to be the season of the first ripe grapes.

The usual criticisms of the spies - namely, that they portrayed the land too negatively - seem wide of the mark. Wasn't it their assignment to report on what they saw?! They report both the negative and the positive, and the "dissenting report" of Caleb and Joshua (Num. 14:7), which mentions only the positive, is much less credible to the Israelites. At the same time, everything following upon the return of the spies seems strangely overblown, disproportionate, including the spies' words, "A land that devours its inhabitants" (Num. 13:32) and the mourning customs that Caleb and Joshua adopt - they rend their clothes (Num. 14:6).

Above, we took a detour into Genesis in order to discuss the divine project; we can conclude that in the Creation, God indeed created man in His image - namely, a creature of words - for, indeed, God himself created the world via words. To create via words means not only to create life but also to give it a "body" of meaning. Only a "word", only a "verb" can give meaning.

Let us now return to the spies. Why does God reproach them in words of astounding force, words that question everything: God swears by His own life (14:21,28). What is going on here that makes God question Himself? Is this the first time the Israelites have offended by their lack of faith in God and His project? Clearly, the issues in this story are absolutely fundamental, for what is at stake is not only the existence of the Jewish People, but also, as it were, God's existence. The mission of the spies/scouts is not in itself the problem. God accepts it and Moses organizes and directs it. The problem lies with the nature of the group, with its goal. The mission of the 12 spies was to characterize the land in words and bring those words back to the people who depended on them. Their mission was not to portray nature/the world/reality as a fate beyond human choice; they had to understand that man - via his words, via the meanings that he assigns - can create or destroy the world. Instead, 10 spies report the objective reality without lying, but convey a sense of alienation from this reality; they see no role for themselves in God's project. Caleb and Joshua understand them and offer the people a positive and confident view of the land and of their future. But it is too little and too late; the Israelites will not hear of it. They are unprepared, they see only death facing them, and they plan to return to Egypt led by another.

At that moment, Moses, Aaron, Joshua and Caleb understand that the nation has failed its mission to testify to all mankind that God created the world on different terms from the bare facts that we see and grasp. What we see is not necessarily what will be. The subjectivity of our words and speech can make or break the world. Hence the importance of witnesses in our legal systems, and the necessity of their careful selection. The nation has endangered its existence - the reason for its existence. It is a moment to mourn, and Caleb and Joshua rend their clothes.

In that moment God's existence is in doubt, at it were, because what He has to offer the world, via man and via the Jewish People, is in doubt. Moses appeals to God to reconsider His decision, out of concern not for how other nations will see Him, but for what they may conclude: that the project presented in the Torah is nothing but another inconsistent and unreachable utopia, and that the God of Israel is no different from other gods. God agrees not to destroy the Jewish People, but the Israelites are left to wander the desert [מדבר] for 40 years in order to learn to speak [לדבר]. The root of the word "desert" is דבר, which is also the root of "speak", suggesting that right speech emerges from the "desert" experience.

It is in the desert that the Jews learn to speak. Only then can they enter the land of Israel - not the generation that left Egypt, but rather their children, the generation grounded in responsibility and independence.

Writing is painful for me, but what I have written rewards and releases me. I dedicate these thoughts to my beloved sister, Babette. I thank her for the chance to concentrate only on her, when life too rarely offers us the time for such concentration. Babette always assumed her responsibilities with courage and generosity; she did not follow the crowd, but reached her own conclusions. She remained free. Had she belonged to the desert generation, she would not have howled with the wolves. She would have merited the Promised Land.

1. I would like to thank Joël Benhamou, whose essay "Exil de la parole exil de l'Homme" ("Exile of the word, exile of Man") inspired mine, and Maya Frankfurter for translating my essay into Hebrew. Note: English translations from the Torah are adapted from the J.P.S. translation.

Evelyne Sitruk teaches in a Jewish school in Marseilles, France, and serves on the city council of Marseilles.

 

Why Was the Parasha [Passage] of Tzitzit Tacked On as a Third Parasha of Kriyat Shema?

The significance of the relationship between And you shall love and And these words shall be [the first two sentences of the first parasha of Kriyat Shema] in the Shema, and the relationship between this first parasha and the second parasha - And if you will carefully obey my commands is illuminated by the addition of the third parasha - the parasha of Tzitzit - to the two opening parshiyot. This portion deals with memory and action; it expressly directs man's awareness not to the subject of "God and Man" but the subject of "Commandments and Man" (...and you shall remember all God's commands, and you will observe them... so that you remember and perform all My commands...). Remembrance is a thing of the heart, and, at first blush, it would have seemed possible to combine it with "faith" and "love" in their abstract sense; but Scripture states the meaning of remembrance is the performance of the commandments. Remembrance of God exists in the believer's consciousness on one of two planes: that of Shema (pure belief lishema', with no ulterior motive) - God is the Lord; and the second plane, that of And if you will carefully obey (belief shelo lishmah - with ulterior motive) - God is the supra-Minister of Finance, supra-Minister of Health, supra-Minister of Security, etc.. But regardless of whether one remembers God on the Shema plane or on the And if you will carefully obey plane - both obligate the observance of mitzvoth.

At the conclusion of Parashat Tzitzit, which concludes the Kriyat Shema, there appears a concept with specifically religious significance, the concept of kedusha - holiness: And you shall be holy. This concept has no meaning outside the world of religious faith. True, the concept has filtered into the day-to-day vernacular, taking on secular meanings, such as: "The memory of my late mother is holy to me" - but in such as case it is no more than an idiom with emotional content. In its original and essential meaning, "holy" refers only to God; therefore it cannot be explained through concepts taken from human thought or in other terms from human language, and it cannot be applied to anything found in the world. In human reality the category of kedusha can be used only to designate activity directed toward the kadosh - the Holy One" - a designation of the service of God through observance of the mitzvoth. It designates the purpose and goal to which one must strive, and also the striving itself, but it does not designate any given or existing thing. In human reality, there is only functional kedusha; the essential kedusha is God's alone. Whoever attributes kedusha to anything from the natural or artificial reality - to man, to the land, to an institution, to an edifice, to an object - is guilty of idol worship; he raises it to the level of the divine. This is the great meaning presented to man by the mitzvah of Tzitzit: so that you remember and perform all My commands and you will be holy...; that is to say, you are not holy by virtue of your essence; your holiness is not something which exists in yourself; it is something for you to achieve. The mission is eternal, because it is tied to a condition which can be fulfilled only with eternal effort.

We bring the words of one of the greatest Torah scholars and believers, one of the greatest religious thinker of recent generations, Rabbi Meir Simkha HaKohen of Dvinsk, author of the Meshekh Hokhma. Many times, with great emphasis, he repeats in his book his explanation that "there is nothing holy in the world... only the Lord, Blessed Be He, is holy, and only He is deserving of praise and service"; no creation has holiness - only the Creator, Blessed Be He"; "all things considered holy - the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, the Temple, the Tablets of the Law - none of these possess intrinsic holiness, but they were sanctified through action and mitzvoth." Therefore, when Israel repudiates the Torah and violates the mitzvoth - all the above lose their holiness, they become profane. He repeats this idea again and again: "Do not imagine that the mount is something holy..."; "...Do not imagine that the Tabernacle and the Temple are, in themselves, holy entities" and many more such statements. In one place he adds the remark "This is a weighty matter" - as though he had foreseen how "religious" Jews, 50 years after his death, would disgrace and profane the concept of holiness by exploiting as cover for satisfaction of human needs and interests - private or communal.

It seems that Torah desired to instill in us the deep religious significance of holiness, and therefore it placed the story of Korah in juxtaposition to the parasha of Tzitzit. A space of only three lines separates between the great programmatic proclamation of faith voiced by our Teacher Moses (You shall be holy) and the programmatic proclamation of faith voiced by Korah: "The entire community is holy" - i.e., holiness is not a goal which Israel is charged to achieve but it already exists inherently and unconditionally. The great concept of faith - holiness - is profaned and becomes an idolatrous concept.

(From Y. Leibowitz: Paths to Faith in Judaism, in Emunah, Historiya, ve'Arakhim, pp. 18-19)

 

 

Elisabeth Nehama Warschawski - "Babette" - was born in Strasbourg on Shabbat, the ninth of Av 5718 (1958). She was the sixth of seven children born to Rabbi Meir Shimon Warschawski and his wife Mireille. After completing an MA at the University of Strasbourg, she came to live in Israel and continued her studies of the history of religion in the Second Temple period and of archaeology. In 1982 she joined the staff of the Centre de Recherche Français de Jérusalem - a French governmental institution that supports the work of French and Israeli researchers in the fields of archeology, history, and the social sciences - and in 1977 became the Secretary General of the Center. Babette died 5 years ago on the 15^th of Sivan after a protracted struggle with cancer, and was survived by her husband, Daniel Rohrlich, their daughter Talia (who became a Bat-Mitzvah two months after Babette's passing), her parents, brothers, sisters, and many others who loved her.

 

 

 

 

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